Page 210 - Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco

194 Jim Stewart

Maybe some miracle would pull off the show. There had
recently been the case of a show in a gallery on Market Street
where buckets of red paint had been splashed on the paintings
because some group or another had deemed the works politically
incorrect. The news hit the art world. Out of the debacle the art-
ist got a show in New York. My hopes rose when one of the post
card reception invitations was returned in an envelope. The bare
breasts of the dominatrix photo had big red Xs drawn on them.
On the back in angry red letters I was castigated for bringing such
“Trash” to a Filipino family neighborhood. I sensed the writer
was not Filipino, but rather another advocate of political correct-
ness. I really should have titled the show “Trash.” Alas, there were
no buckets of red paint. No show in New York.
The night of the opening reception, 544 Natoma was packed.
Lou wrote “Cheap Hotel” backwards from behind a sheet strung
across the stage. Some feat! His stage performance paintings were
greeted with great applause. So were the drag queen performances
and Kabuki theater pieces.
By the end of the month I hadn’t sold enough works to cover
my expenses. I wasn’t sure what to do with the stack of matted
and framed photos.

Henry, an All-American Boy from Wisconsin, came into Fe-
Be’s one afternoon as I sat nursing a scotch on the rocks.
“Have you seen this?” he said, as he held out a copy of the
Bay Area Reporter. He was shaking the weekly bar rag so much
for emphasis that nobody could possibly have read what he was
pointing to. “It’s lifted from a New York gay rag. It says right here,
‘Gay pneumonia’ is hitting the New York community. Have you
heard of this? Gay pneumonia?” He looked first at the bartender
who had come up to take his order, then at me, then back again.
The bartender shook his head and raised his eyebrows at Henry.
“Draft,” Henry said to the bartender.
“Gay pneumonia? How could there be such a thing? Pneu-
monia can’t know if you’re gay or not,” I said.
“It says right here, ‘gay pneumonia,’” Henry said as he stabbed
his thick forefinger at the weekly issue of B.A.R.